Economic absurdities thatDemocrats must expose:

...even though it is based on pitting the worlds' workers against each other.

...union bosses are only out for themselves.

...and the more the rich have, the more will trickle down to everyone else.

...Democrats are communists, or at least, socialists at heart.

...so when we tax wealthy investors, we lose jobs.

...so investors, not workers, create wealth.

...so we should give them all the tax breaks possible.

...Democrats just want to tax and spend today.

General Issues:

...It's a mountain, and a terrible defense of globalization.

...for those of Indonesia, Mexico, China and India.

...and how not to do it again.

...and the "crisis" is just a ploy by those who want to destroy it.

...Republicans' most important propaganda technique.

...and get the media on your side

When arguing the merits of a progressive income tax, don't take the usual approach that "the rich can afford it," or that "it won't hurt them as much."

Republicans love to attack reasons like these, because of "fairness," no less. Instead, point out that our richest citizens have benefited most from the policies that right wing extremists have been implementing for the past 25 years. The wealthy
caused these policies and they benefit the most from them.

Especially since the '80s began, conservative politicians have made corporations more profitable, they've increased the wealth of the already wealthy, and they've forced huge sacrifices on middle and low income Americans. They accomplished this by:
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Forcing workers to compete with the most brutalized workers in the world,

Loading the courts with Republican judges,

Manipulating the prime rate, and by

Passing all kinds of anti-worker legislation.

It is only fair that those who caused these conditions (by getting America's right wing extremists elected), and benefited from them, pay their fair share of the costs that they generated.

A second argument for the progressive tax

Never in recent history has greed been so richly rewarded. Between 1942 and 1962, the tax rate for our richest Americans was at least 88%, and as high as 91%.

In those days, when CEOs considered firing thousands of workers for a
million dollar bonus, the moral condemnation didn't seem to be worth it.
After taxes, it only amounted to, say, only $120,000. Today, when a CEO
fires thousands of workers, he gets a two million dollar bonus, and he
gets to keep a million of it. Suddenly, we're talking serious money.
And when he retires he can move to one of our country's many guarded
communities with his millionaire cronies, and he gets virtually no moral
condemnation from his golfing buddies.

So, let's go back to the tax rates we had for our richest citizens between 1942 and 1962. Or, at least, we could go to the rates we had from 1962 to 1982, when it was at least 70%.

And by the way, over that period of forty years between '42 and '82, none of the bad things that conservatives warn about happened. We didn't have massive unemployment, we didn't stifle innovation, and, above all, we didn't become communists.